Zitate Kenneth Tynan

— Kenneth TynanContext: People have always needed art: but why have they needed it? And what shaped the forms by which they satisfied their need? … In the arts form tends to be conservative, and content to be revolutionary; it is novelty of content that precedes, demands and imposes novelty of form.
Review of The Necessity of Art (1959) by Ernest Fischer

— Kenneth TynanContext: I believe in neither a director’s nor a writer’s theatre, but a theatre of intelligent audiences. I count myself as a member of an intelligent audience, and I wrote to you as such. That you should disagree with me I can understand, but that you should resent my expressing my opinions is something that frankly amazes me. I thought we had outgrown the idea of theatre as a mystic rite born of secret communion between author, director, actors and an empty auditorium.
Letter to George Devine (10 March 1964), printed in Kenneth Tynan : A Life by Dominic Shellard<!-- Yale University Press, 2003, --> , p. 292

— Kenneth TynanContext: Useless, of course, to point out that the genesis of good plays is hardly ever abstract; that it tends, on the contrary, to be something as concrete and casual as a glance intercepted, a remark overheard, or an insignificant news item buried at the bottom of page three. Yet it is by trivialities like these that the true playwright's blood is fired. They spur him to story-telling; they bring on the narrative fit that is his glory and his basic credential. Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a peeping Tom, and I will show you the makings of a dramatist. Only the makings, of course: curiosity about people is merely the beginning of the road to the masterpiece: but if that curiosity is sustained you will find, when the rules have been mastered and the end has been reached, that a miracle has happened.
Pausing on the Stairs (1957)<!-- also quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (2014 edition) -->

— Kenneth TynanContext: Art and ideology often interact on each other; but the plain fact is that both spring from a common source. Both draw on human experience to explain mankind to itself; both attempt, in very different ways, to assemble coherence from seemingly unrelated phenomena; both stand guard for us against chaos.

— Kenneth TynanContext: I believe in neither a director’s nor a writer’s theatre, but a theatre of intelligent audiences. I count myself as a member of an intelligent audience, and I wrote to you as such. That you should disagree with me I can understand, but that you should resent my expressing my opinions is something that frankly amazes me. I thought we had outgrown the idea of theatre as a mystic rite born of secret communion between author, director, actors and an empty auditorium.
Letter to George Devine (10 March 1964), printed in Kenneth Tynan : A Life by Dominic Shellard<!-- Yale University Press, 2003, --> , p. 292

— Kenneth TynanSallust, Bellum Catilinae, X, 5. This particular translation of the original Latin is from the essay "On Liberty" by Abraham Cowley: "Sallust, therefore, who was well acquainted with them both and with many such-like gentlemen of his time, says, 'That it is the nature of ambition' (Ambitio multos mortales falsos fieri coegit, etc.) 'to make men liars and cheaters; to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths; to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will.'" http://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02/cowes10.txt The Wikiquote page for Sallust has the quote and a different translation.

— Kenneth Tynan"This going into Europe will not turn out to be the thrilling mutual exchange supposed. It is more like nine middle aged couples with failing marriages meeting in a darkened bedroom in a Brussels hotel for a group grope." - E.P. Thompson, "On the Europe Debate," The London Times (27 March 1975) http://www.bloomsbury.com/ARC/detail.asp?EntryID=104755&bid=5

— Kenneth TynanSpoken during a discussion on censorship, broadcast live on the BBC program BBC-3, (13 November 1965) Tynan was the first to say this word on British television, leading to an apology from the BBC and several motions in the House of Commons.